Get the Government Out of Student Loans

City Journal
By Nicole Gelinas

With student-loan interest rates set to spike in July, Democrats in Congress and President Obama are up to their usual tricks, pushing legislation that would keep rates low. Instead of seizing the opportunity to stick up for free markets—and students—and distinguish himself from his opposition, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is joining the sleight-of-hand game. That’s a mistake that a supporter of free markets shouldn’t have made.

The latest excuse for presidential and congressional grandstanding is a supposed crisis that Congress itself manufactured. In 2007, back when Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats held the House majority, lawmakers passed a bill that gradually cut the interest rate on federally backed student loans in half, from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent.

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